On Wednesday, June 21, 2028, hour 38 of a massive water riot in Los Angeles, an ensemble cast of unofficial health care professionals, criminals and cops converge on the Hotel Artemis, a dark room or an underground, unofficial emergency room that is off the police’s radar, find themselves unexpectedly connected to each other and the resolution of the central conflict on their respective life stories. When I saw the preview, I was extremely psyched because it felt like an offshoot of the John Wick franchise and has an amazing cast.
I was unable to see Hotel Artemis opening weekend, but I rushed to see it on a weekday during its opening week when I noticed that the theater that I wanted to see it in was planning to reduce it to one evening showing the second weekend, which is a bad sign. I was the only one in the theater. In contrast, the seats at a second weekday showing of Hereditary were almost half full. In this case, the people got it right.
Hotel Artemis starts at the excitement rate of a ten with a stunning cold opening, but can’t keep up the frenetic pace no matter how much contrived tension the story tries to build up by adding more characters, constantly reminding viewers of the time or having rapid paced, snappy dialogue that either works (“They bought your death. Don’t give them your dignity for free”) or is cringe worthy (“All right, baby. Send me down the river,” which is a reference to the River Styx). It is a story that works on paper, but doesn’t fill with the breath of life when uttered by the magnificent cast. The story never feels real because the characters are closer to archetypes than three-dimensional characters. Quentin Tarantino dialogue is anything but realistic, but somehow I’m usually completely immersed in his world because I get invested in the characters and the plot.
Sterling K. Brown plays the smarter, older brother, who is held back by his screw up brother played by Brian Tyree Henry. Initially they seem like the main characters, but they are clearly not, just a point of entry for the audience to enter this world and someone to root for. Jodie Foster is the central character and plays The Nurse who patches them up, but is unable to heal herself from past trauma. Sofia Boutella plays a deadly, high level assassin and unsurprisingly has the best fight scene at the end of the movie, which felt long overdue after all the build up. Charlie Day’s character seems to exist to annoy them and act as an additional obstacle. Dave Bautista plays Everest, her devoted assistant, and even though he isn’t asked to do much except be intimidating and give humorous dialogue, pay close attention to his face during the movie because he is acting his ass off by projecting all the range of emotions during his screen time. Zachary Quinto plays the insecure son of the crime boss in LA, and while the character is supposed to be annoying and extra, Quinto’s range is limited. Other than Spock, he hasn’t grown since he first made a splash in Heroes. Jeff Goldblum plays the crime boss, and if you like him, you’ll like him, but he feels more like a tidy bow than a full-fledged character, which is also the case with Jenny Slate’s character.
Hotel Artemis has the same flaw as Star Trek: Into Darkness. It keeps on setting up these scenarios that if a certain event happens, then an awful thing will happen, but it never does. Someone steals from the Wolf King, which usually means death, but he doesn’t even notice, and ultimately it goes nowhere other than to explain some past events. If you’re not a Hotel Artemis member, you can’t enter, and especially if you are a member of a certain profession, but it happens and again, no one seems too bothered about it. When a movie sets up so many rules, especially in a rule of criminals, you expect them to be broken at some point, but in John Wick 2, it is still shocking, awesome and thrilling. It raises the stakes and opens the story up to scary, but exciting possibilities for future entries. Here it just feels routine and falls flat like a failed soufflé.
It is a shame that Hotel Artemis does not quite work because the world is fully formed and just technologically advanced enough to seem like our plausible future, but just decayed enough to feel like the dystopian, psychological trajectory that our timeline is currently on. One of my friends blames the Hadron Collider, and I think that original sin is a theologically fancy way of saying that human beings have always tilted towards trash even when there was none. Sadly I think that the socioeconomic and political landscape of this film is a window into our future, but it just acts as a backdrop that lends nothing but wallpaper to the film. All the cool gadgets are used according to their original design and satisfyingly later as weapons.
Unless you’re a big fan of the cast or like criminal ensemble movies where everyone ends up facing off, skip Hotel Artemis or wait to see it at home. There are too many good movies currently in theaters to waste your time or money on this one.